04 June 2014

Windows 7 growth almost double that of Windows 8.x

In Redmond they must be wondering WTF! -- Windows 7 has 50.06 percent market share, Windows 8.x only 12.71 percent --Normal service is resumed as Windows 7's growth once again comfortably outpaces Windows 8.x: "... So the question is, where are XP users moving to? I think you probably know the answer to that by now.
Windows 8 continued to lose market share, going from 6.36 percent in April to 6.29 percent in May for a drop of 0.07 percent. Windows 8.1 grew share, going from 5.88 percent to 6.35 percent, for an increase of 0.47 percent. You don’t need a calculator to work out that in total Windows 8.x share grew by 0.4 percent. The previous month it grew by 0.9 percent, which was its biggest market share gain since December 2013.
It might be hard to get hold of Windows 7 these days, but that hasn’t stopped the OS packing on growth. It went from 49.27 percent in April to 50.06 percent in May -- finally breaking through the 50 percent barrier -- for an increase of 0.79 percent, nearly double that of Windows 8.x...."Charging a Smartphone, No Wires Required | MIT Technology Review: ".... Energous is the latest in a long line of companies fixated on the idea that life would be easier if we didn’t have so many wires and gadgets to plug in. Yet many of the wireless charging products that have come to market have relied on special charging mats that juice up devices at a short distance, and they’re still not that popular with consumers. “There’s not very many people that want to take their phone and go leave it somewhere while it charges,” Energous CEO Stephen Rizzone argues. “If they’re going to leave it somewhere while it charges, they’re going to plug it into a wall.”..."How Advanced Socialbots Have Infiltrated Twitter | MIT Technology Review: "....Freitas and co also monitored the Klout score of each of their social bots to see how they fared. (Klout is an online service that measures the influence of Twitter accounts, giving them a score between 0 and 100). “We ﬁnd that the socialbots achieved Klout scores of the same order of (or, at times, even higher than) several well-known academicians and social network researchers,” they say...."What's New And Different About Apple's New Swift Programming Language? "....There are performance improvements, too, but White says the sandbox feature--"where you can run stuff in Playgrounds to be able to change code on the fly without recompiling"--is an even bigger boon. "The overall syntax is very JavaScripty in a way--they're moving toward not having hard type variables," White says. He calls it a mishmash of a scripting language, with all the power of a compiled language. "It's still native, it still compiles, but it's a style of programming that a lot of people--especially backend developers--are used to...."Secret Global Strike Kills 2 Malicious Web Viruses - NYTimes.com: "Federal agents over the weekend secretly seized control of two computer networks that hackers used to steal millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims. In doing so, the Justice Department disrupted the circulation of two of the world’s most pernicious viruses and turned a 30-year-old Russian computer hacker into a most-wanted fugitive. The strike, coordinated with the European authorities, was aimed at malware called GameOver Zeus, which is known to steal bank information and send it to overseas hackers, and CryptoLocker, which burrows into computers and encrypts personal data. The hackers then demand a ransom to unlock the files... Together, the Justice Department estimates, the two malicious programs have infected between 500,000 and a million computers and cost people more than $100 million in direct and indirect losses. Authorities had been investigating the two viruses separately, but along the way, they realized that GameOver Zeus was the main vehicle by which CryptoLocker was spread, the Justice Department said...."

Apple Dumps Google Search For Microsoft's BingInformationWeekFacebook · Twitter · LinkedIn · Google+ · RSS ... Apple has dealt Google another blow by announcing a new default Web search provider ... Last year, the company struck a deal with Microsoft to name Bing as the default ... to its list of default search engines, which also include Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

How Apple's new iCloud pricing compares to rivalsLos Angeles TimesApple on Monday announced it will soon offer cheaper iCloud plans. ... Apple's new pricing makes it a more affordable option than Microsoft, Box and Dropbox. The new pricing also makes it more comparable to Google's pricing.

64-bit beta Chrome Web browser arrives for WindowsZDNetOn June 3, Google announced that it had released a 64-bit version of its Chrome Web browser for Windows 7 and 8. A 64-bit Chrome Web browser has long been available on Linux. 64-bit-Chrome Google's 64-bit Chrome for Windows 7 and 8 is still very ...

Comcast to Encrypt Email For SecurityWall Street JournalThe move came just hours after Google called out email providers, including Comcast, for not using encryption. Google Tuesday publicized for the first time the share of its email traffic with other providers that remains encrypted. According to Google, fewer ...

Great artists steal: The iOS 8 features inspired by AndroidArs TechnicaApple has taken the wraps off iOS 8, its newest mobile operating system, at its WWDC keynote. There were lots of new features added to iOS, but any observer familiar with Android saw quite a few things that seem... familiar. That's because many of Apple's ...

Photo: Hubble captures 'most colorful' view of the universeSan Jose Mercury NewsAstronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have assembled a comprehensive picture of the evolving universe -- among the most colorful deep space images ever captured by the 24-year-old telescope, NASA said Tuesday. This handout composite ...